Soul deep
by kylermalloy
Summary: His eyes fill with tears all of a sudden. It happens on occasion, when he realizes his mortality and all his cheerful stoicism dissolves. In his moment of vulnerability, he holds his arms out wordlessly for Sam.


Jack dies in Sam's arms.

It happens quietly, unexpectedly. Cas isn't there—he's still out, searching for a solution. Dean and Sam are both in Jack's room with him, helping him sit up and drink some broth. It's a good day for Jack. He's able to smile, whisper a few words through bloodless lips. He even holds the bowl of soup, hands only shaking a little.

Then, once he's finished with his meal, his eyes fill with tears all of a sudden. It happens on occasion, when he realizes his mortality and all his cheerful stoicism dissolves.

In his moment of vulnerability, he holds his arms out wordlessly for Sam.

Sam goes straight to him without hesitation. He sits on the bed beside Jack, wrapping his long arms around Jack's small torso. Jack melts against him, burying his face in Sam's chest. Sam can feel his thin body trembling, can hear his quiet, labored sniffles.

One hand knots around the hem of Sam's shirt. Clinging to him. Sam rests his chin on top of Jack's head and meets Dean's troubled eyes across the room.

Jack relaxes against Sam little by little, eventually falling into a doze. The hand clutching Sam's shirt slowly opens. All the tension from his tired body loosens. Sam won't dare try to move him, disturb him at all.

Jack's birth was cataclysmic, revelatory, biblical. His death is anything but.

Sam isn't sure when exactly it happened—can't pinpoint the moment his tiny, shallow breaths eased into nothing. Can't tell when the weight of Jack's sleeping body became dead weight. When the pale stillness of his face changed from peaceful to unsettling.

Once it registers, though, Sam's body lights up with adrenaline. Jack doesn't respond to his name, to Sam jostling him gently, or even when his head slumps free at a painful angle.

That's when Sam panics. He screams his brother's name, his voice cracking the silence like thunder.

Dean rushes over immediately to Sam, who cradles Jack's limp frame helplessly, unable to move or let go.

Jack's head lolls back as Dean checks for breathing, checks for a pulse, even slaps his cheeks a few times in desperation. All the while shouting his name.

Sam is frozen with his arms locked around Jack's still body. The truth has already started to sink in for him. It spreads through him like a poison. Stunning him. Paralyzing him.

When Dean gives up, slams the contents of the bedside table onto the floor, Sam doesn't move. He doesn't think he can.

He cradles Jack like a small child. Rocks back and forth in a tiny, obsessive pattern. Tries to ignore the cooling of his skin, the stiffness setting into his limbs.

One of his hands moves to steady Jack's head, which flops lifelessly around on Sam's chest. He holds it against his ribcage, right above his heart. So Jack could hear his heartbeat. If he were there.

Sam can feel his own lips moving—is aware that he's saying something, but the world has slowed like molasses, and he hears sound dreamlike, through a thick veil. _You gotta call Cas. Tell him._

He can't tell if Dean replies, or if he even heard him. Sam is rapidly getting tunnel vision, his sight blurring in and out, black creeping along his periphery. His world has shrunk in these few minutes to just the boy he holds in his arms, so very young and fragile and _dead—_

Oh g*d. Thinking it, _acknowledging_ it, that what Sam holds to his chest is nothing more than a shell, the expired mortal vessel of the child he's come to care about, to _love,_ sends a convulsion of heat through Sam, red-hot and excruciating.

 _Where he is now?_ Sam doesn't know—no one probably knows—where nephilim go when they die. Is he in purgatory, pursued by all manner of monsters? In the expanse of the Empty, with his father? The very idea fills Sam with nausea.

He doesn't know where Jack is. Jack is somewhere—or nowhere—without his powers and Sam can't protect him. Sam can't be with him.

Sam berates himself—stupid, _stupid_ —for not doing more, for not spending more time looking for a cure like Cas, for not being there for Jack all those nights he'd lain awake, hating himself for not killing Michael, not stopping Lucifer, for losing his powers when they needed him the most. All the while Sam sat in the library night after fruitless night, drinking far too much in an attempt to fill the Dean-sized hole in the bunker beside him.

Sam will never have that time with Jack now, to tell him he matters, to tell him it's okay, that no one blames him, to say _I love you too, I'm sorry I didn't say it back sooner._

He's suddenly overtaken by a grotesque desire to laugh, because—

It just occurred to him, _they never had the chance to watch Lord of the Rings, Jack had been reading the books and Sam promised they'd have a movie marathon one of these days, once they got Dean back, once they dealt with Michael, onceyou'rebetterJackIpromise—_

There's no _tomorrow._ No _someday._ Just the present, just _now,_ where Sam holds Jack in a twisted reenactment of the Pietà—the Devil's Chosen cradling the Devil's Son.

Except there's no happy ending to this version of the story. No magic resurrection three days in. No promise of reunion in an eternal paradise. Jack broke all the rules being born, anyway.

Sam had sworn to himself he wouldn't let Jack die. That they'd find a way, because they always did.

He now holds the broken shards of that promise in his very hands. The pieces cut through him, deep, deeper than bone.

Torture's got nothing on this pain.

* * *

 **...I'm sorry? I didn't have a choice? Scream at me in a comment! They feed my SOUL. I'm on tumblr too, hop over and scream at me there too!**


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